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Big Block Dodge headlines fundraiser for Nepal at SAB

Hendersonville native Kristian Gaylord had been visiting Nepal and hiking around Mt. Everest for about three weeks when he read about a poor village in desperate need of medicine and other aid in the aftermath of the April earthquake.


He walked two days to reach the village of Laprak, where he encountered people living in tents and tin shacks and heard that several villagers had died of exposure while others were malnourished in the severe Himalayan winter. He became determined to raise money for medicine, blankets and other supplies.
Gaylord, a 2015 high school graduate, has been traveling the world during a gap year between high school and college.
“He’s raised $6,000 and made two deliveries to the village,” said his father, Ken Gaylord, a Hendersonville architect and contractor. “He made his last delivery about a week ago. He’s basically out of money. He’s delivered the last of the money.”
Nevertheless, the effort to help the earthquake victims will go on this weekend at Southern Appalachian Brewery in a fundraiser with music by Big Block Dodge. The event is at 7 p.m. at SAB, 822 Locust St.
“Any additional money will be distributed through Care Nepal,” an organization that is helping earthquake victims, Gaylord.
Kristian won’t be there because he’s currently in Bangkok, Thailand.
The son of Gaylord and his wife, Denise Layfield, Kristian attended Christ School and then the North Carolina School of Science and Math, graduating in 2015. He will enroll in August at SciencesPo in France, a dual program of the French university and Columbia University. He’ll spend two years in France in a Middle Eastern studies program before finishing the bachelor’s degree program at Columbia in New York City, his father said. He speaks French and Arabic.
Here is what Kristian wrote to a friend about his reaction upon reading upon the devastation:
“I packed all my things and took a bus as far as I could towards the village of Laprak that I had read about in the paper. Then I walked for two days. When I got to the village, it was immediately clear that the people were pretty desperate. It was between 5-10 degrees (F) outside at night and they were living in emergency shelter tents and tin shacks provided by relief organizations with almost no ability to keep warm. The only reason the whole camp hasn’t died is because they build a fire inside of their shelters (you get hit by a massive, eye-burning, lung-choking wall of smoke when you step in) and sleep below the smoke line to stay warm at night. It’s quite incredible. Seeing such an extreme need was pretty intense, so I made the trip back to the nearest ‘major city’ (two days walk) and got to work raising money.”

Kristian made one last trip to the village before leaving Nepal.

"I have just returned to Kathmandu from my second trip up the mountain to bring supplies to Laprak and neighboring villages." he wrote in a blog post on his fundraising site. "I was able to bring medicine to restock what we underestimated the need for in Laprak the first time, as well as a full supply for Gumda, a village just across the valley to the east. I was also fortunate enough to deliver 300+ books, sponsored by Hadaya Toys, to the temporary school shelter in Laprak, which resulted in a lot of happy faces running around the camp this weekend!"